


The Gambit

by devovitsuasartes



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-28
Updated: 2017-04-28
Packaged: 2018-10-25 00:51:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10753296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devovitsuasartes/pseuds/devovitsuasartes
Summary: Ian visits Svetlana at the massage parlor and makes an offer.Set in Season 3 - post-beating, pre-wedding.





	The Gambit

Svetlana is enjoying a quiet conversation with Nika in the back room, slowly inching her way closer to the blonde and gazing into her eyes with a practiced smirk, when Sasha’s pitbull of a lackey comes bursting rudely in. He looks them up and down, unimpressed, then crooks a finger at Svetlana.

‘Break time is over,’ he says. ‘You have a customer.’

The moment broken, Nika turns away and lights a cigarette, sparing Svetlana a sympathetic glance. Svetlana sighs despondently, threads the fingers of her hands together, turns them so that the palms face outwards and pushes into the stretch until the knuckles crack. Heading out of the break room, she flexes and curls her fingers over and over again, listening to them crack and pop. This job will surely leave her arthritic before she reaches 30. It’s lucky that she will have an American husband soon, and an American baby. Terry Milkovich called it an “anchor baby” with a sneer, and Svetlana likes the sound of that. She likes the idea of being anchored.

The customer is already in one of the “massage” rooms, so Svetlana briefly checks her reflection in the mirror, finds no fault, and heads inside.

‘Take your clothes off,’ she says to the customer, who is irritatingly still fully dressed. They are supposed to be naked already at this point.

He doesn’t move to pull off his clothes, though. Svetlana wonders if he’s nervous. He is young, probably not yet legal to do a lot of things in this country, and he has his arms folded around himself, his head ducked, sitting on the edge of the massage table. Hoping to hurry things along, Svetlana sheds her robe, leaving behind just a thin, lacy teddy. She reaches out and touches his arm, runs her fingers up his firm bicep and squeezes his shoulder. ‘First time?’ she asks.

The boy takes a deep, shuddering breath. ‘Stop,’ he says.

Svetlana pauses, wrongfooted. ‘This is what you pay for, yes?’

‘I paid because I needed to talk to you. In private.’

This is a long way off-script now, and it’s making Svetlana uneasy. Maybe this boy is some obsessive who has been following her around, or some creep who can only get off on raping girls and needed to find a girl who can’t go to the police. Either way, she’s considering yelling for the bouncers to drag him out when the kid speaks again.

‘I have more money,’ he says. ‘All of my savings.’

Svetlana quirks an eyebrow, interested. ‘You want something special?’

‘I want to pay for you to get an abortion.’

The words hang heavy in the air. The nasty strains of the cheap massage mix CD - turned up loud to drown out the sound of grunts and groans through the thin walls - are the only sound Svetlana can hear. She is turning the boy’s words over in her head, looking at his pale skin and head of orange hair, and before long she thinks she has this figured out. She grabs the boy’s chin roughly, forcefully lifts his head. His eyes are red and watery, and his face is covered in injuries - a black eye, a fat lip. She has seen him before.

‘Ah,’ she says gently, with a knowing smile. ‘I know you.’

The boy’s mouth twists. ‘Yeah?’

‘You were Mickey’s boy. The faggot.’

Hearing Svetlana say her fiancé’s name aloud just seems to make the boy angrier. He shakes with barely-contained rage and hisses, ‘You want the abortion or not?’

Svetlana laughs. ‘Not. You want blowjob? Handjob?’

‘No!’ He glares at her. ‘The only reason Mickey’s marrying you is because you’re pregnant. So what’s it gonna take for you to get an abortion? You want more money?’

‘I am not getting abortion,’ Svetlana says in a steely voice. A lifetime of being ordered around by men has left her with a serious distaste for it, and she is certainly not going to take orders from this little scrap of an adolescent.

Those big, watery eyes meet her gaze and he spits viciously, ‘You know Mickey’s still gay, right? You didn’t, you didn’t…’ But he can’t seem to finish the sentence.

‘I hope so. A husband I do not even have to fuck? Good deal.’

‘He doesn’t love you! He loves me!’

Svetlana just laughs again. She lights a cigarette, takes a drag. This is definitely an American child - a pampered little prince, raised on Disney movies and silly romance stories. In a way Svetlana envies him, to be able to take all of this for granted, but she is also glad that she came to America when she was his age, and was able to appreciate it properly.

Silence reigns for a moment - a stand-off. Then Svetlana points her cigarette at the boy’s face and says, ‘Your loverboy. He do this to you?’

The redhead looks away abruptly, turning his head so that Svetlana gets a good look at the shiny, purpling bruise on his cheekbone and the tender swelling of his mouth.

‘He’s not like that,’ the boy says, his voice wobbling. ‘He was just… we got in a fight.’

‘Hmmm.’ Svetlana takes another drag from the cigarette, deliberately blows the smoke at him. ‘This what I have to look forward to?’

For a moment it looks like the boy is going to latch onto that, to warn her that Mickey Milkovich is a violent thug, that he will beat her every day of their marriage, and beat their child too. But then his shoulders sag, and he shakes his head and repeats, ‘He’s not like that.’

‘No?’ She reaches out suddenly, grabs his injured face, and the boy cries out in pain and pulls away.

‘He’s not!’ His voice is high and whiny in defiance. ‘He wouldn’t hit a girl.’

‘Doesn’t fuck girls, doesn’t hit girls.’ Svetlana smirks. ‘Sounds like perfect husband to me.’

The boy looks back at her then, and it’s hard to tell through the bruises but he seems a little admonished. ‘You know,’ he says in a stupid, sanctimonious voice. ‘You don’t have to have the baby. This is America. You have choices here.’

‘Yes. And I choose to have baby.’

‘It’s not even a baby yet! It’s just a… a lump of cells.’ He glares at her midsection, like he could destroy the fetus just by hating it enough.

‘It will be baby.’

‘You raped him!’

The ugly words echo around the room. The boy is shaking, tears spilling over his cheeks. Svetlana considers reminding him that she had no choice, that the old Nazi had been holding a gun. But instead she just shrugs and says, ‘As rapes go, it was not so bad.’

‘How can you even… What does that…’

‘Nothing was put up his ass or in his mouth. His face healed. Not a bad rape. He is lucky.’ She casts around for an anecdote, soon finds one. ‘In my village, I saw faggot get beer bottle shoved up his ass til it broke. Lots of blood.’

‘Ah, Jesus!’ The boy screws up his face, looks away.

‘That was bad rape.’

He folds his arms, tightens his jaw. ‘That doesn’t change anything. It’s not fair. It’s not fair to make him marry you. It’s not fair to make him raise that… that _thing_.’ He’s scowling at her belly again.

Svetlana considers him. She could have him thrown out, but the boy would probably just come snivelling back again, talking about abortions, and she doesn’t need the headache. He might be queer, but Svetlana knows how to play men, and this one has a big glaring weak spot.

It’s too early for the baby to be showing, but Svetlana ate a big lunch and she arches her back a little to stick out her stomach. Gently, she takes one of the boy’s hands, extricates it from the angry knot of his arms, and pulls it towards her. He resists, but not enough to stop her. She puts his hand on her belly, the palm flat. The fetus is probably no bigger than her fingertip, but she’s convincingly created a bump and men can’t tell the difference. If her stomach gurgled right now this silly boy would probably think the baby was kicking.

‘This _thing_ ,’ she says, ‘is him. Half me, half him. It will look like him. It will have his pretty brown eyes.’

The boy’s mouth twists. ‘Mickey has blue eyes,’ he corrects bitterly.

Svetlana presses the pale hand more firmly against her stomach. ‘If it is girl, I name her Anna. If it is boy, I name him Yevgeny.’

He shakes his head. ‘Shut up. I don’t wanna hear any of this.’

‘You love him?’ Svetlana asks bluntly. The boy finally looks up. He has nice green eyes that contrast with his red hair and pale skin. She can see - in a clinical, detached sort of way - why her fiancé finds him attractive - so much so he risked his father’s wrath to carry on their little affair.

‘Yeah,’ the boy says, hoarsely. ‘I do.’

‘But you want to kill his baby.’

‘That’s not…’

‘You think this will make him love you?’

‘He already does!’

Svetlana lashes out, quick as a snake, and slaps him hard on his injured cheek. He cries out, ducks away, hand pressed against his hot, shocked face.

‘Grow up,’ she says, her accent rolling the “r” smoothly.

He’s defeated. He knows it. He sits there, holding his face, his expression contorted with misery. But after a while he takes a few deep breaths and seems to steel himself.

Svetlana glances up at the clock on the wall. ‘Time’s up,’ she says, softly.

The boy collects himself, hops off the massage table and grabs his coat from a nearby chair. Svetlana lights a fresh cigarette, watches him with a kind of bored detachment as she smokes. This wasn’t particularly fun, but it was preferable to giving a hand job. Less messy, too.

The boy straightens himself out. Then he turns to face her, the two of them almost the same height thanks to Svetlana’s heels. She meets his gaze coolly. He clenches his jaw. Then he reaches out - slowly, like he’s trying not to startle her - and plucks the cigarette from her fingers. He stubs it out in an ashtray. She lets him do it.

‘You need to quit smoking,’ he says, his voice steady now. ‘It’s bad for the baby.’

Svetlana smiles, tips her head in the smallest indication of assent.

He’s at the door, fingers on the handle, when he turns back and speaks again, just a shade of that youthful anger returning. ‘This isn’t over,’ he warns. ‘I'll get him back. Even if you marry him, I’ll get him back.’

Svetlana’s face is a mask, giving nothing away. ‘We’ll see.’

After he leaves, she takes time to indulge in a hand massage, rubbing the moisturiser into her sore fingers. Then she pulls her robe back on, and goes to find Nika.

**Author's Note:**

> This was just a bit of Season 3 headcanon, based in part on a deleted scene where Ian goes to the massage parlor to find out what Mickey's future wife is like. In a weird kind of way, I think Ian trying to convince Svetlana to get an abortion (and being talked out of it) would explain why he's so protective of Yevgeny in season 4/5.


End file.
